"WHEN SONNY GETS RED" - THE SYLVESTER KYNER STORY

Seam bowlers in cricket can be divided between sheer pace and medium-fast swing. Sheer pace you have to try and get your bat down on or get safely out of the way of, depending on whether the length is full or short. Medium-fast swing is altogether trickier. It feeds off the surface of the pitch and the overhead weather conditions. A skilful swing bowler can swerve the ball out to catch the outside edge of your bat for a slip catch or swerve it in on to the stumps between bat and pad.

What is all this? Just a rather fanciful analogy between bowling and alto-saxophone playing.

I see players with the facility and the stamina to blow you away at 90mph like pace bowlers. Although they are quite capable of beautiful playing at slow and medium tempos, they alone are capable of the express onslaught. I’m thinking of CHARLIE PARKER, SONNY STITT, CHARLES MACPHERSON and our own PETER KING and, in his jazz prodigy days, NIGEL HITCHCOCK.

But there are less breakneck performers who take you by surprise with the deviations in their playing, moving “off the seam” of straight up-and-down hard bop. JACKIE MCLEAN, ERNIE HENRY, JOHN JENKINS, SHAFI HADI to name a few.

A supreme example of medium-fast alto swing bowling is Sylvester Kyner, better known (but not well enough known) as SONNY RED – “Red”probably for the natural ginger tint of his hair.

I’ve mentioned him once or twice in passing in these Musings but now I’d like to draw him specifically to your attention. Because his playing has a unique and captivating originality. 

He was born in the deep South but moved as a boy to Detroit with his family where he started playing in the late 40s/early 50s with the local jazz godfather, pianist Barry Harris. In 1957, he started appearing on a number of albums with Curtis Fuller. In 1959, Blue Note gave him a recording date (Out of the blue) under his own name.

In 1960 and 1961, he was signed to the Jazzland label (a subsidiary of Riverside) and cut some superb LPs: Breezing, A story tale (with Clifford Jordan) and The mode and Images with Grant Green and Barry Harris.

Sonny was active throughout the 1960s and I have heard some superb gigs privately recorded with Kenny Dorham. In 1966/7, he was a sideman on no less than four Donald Byrd Blue Note records, Mustang, Black Jack, Slow drag and most notably The creeper which was not released until 1981.

Sonny’s playing on The creeper (in the company of Pepper Adams, Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous and Mickey Roker) is fabulous. I have included on the Music page by way of cross-reference the opening track Samba Yantra. Dig it!

Having heard examples of Sonny over his whole career, I think this is my very favourite recording (even though he is limited by virtue of the sextet format to two or three choruses on each tune). He is on the way to Eric Dolphy territory harmonically, his tone is gorgeous and his time swings like mad. (As a drummer, I must confess I wish Roy Haynes had been on the date. With Mickey, things get a bit messy and the tempos creep up!)

The Mainstream label put out a final album in Sonny’s own name in 1971 but he faded into relative obscurity thereafter. In December 1979, a benefit concert was organised for him in Detroit featuring some fine musicians (see the poster) but tragically Sonny died just over a year later in March 1981 at the age of 48.

I have been greatly encouraged in my listening to Sonny by baritone player and musicologist ANDERS SVANOE who has spent many years flying the flag for Sonny and promoting and preserving his memory.

Anders wrote a classic article Bluesville: the journey of Sonny Red for the Annual Review of Jazz Studies Vol.13 (2003) published by Rutgers University.

The material in this article has now happily been expanded into a superb website: www.sonnyredmusic.com Please pay this a visit – apart from the text, you will find a gallery of rare photos and most rewardingly an audio archive with representative examples of Sonny’s playing over the years.

Anders, we all owe you a huge debt of gratitude for your love and devotion to the memory of SONNY RED. Long may his music live on.